“This practical guide provides more than 150 recipes to help you generate high-quality graphs quickly, without having to comb through all the details of R’s graphing systems. Each recipe tackles a specific problem with a solution you can apply to your own project, and includes a discussion of how and why the recipe works.”

He completed the R Graphics Cookbook over the course of a year after a representative from the tech publishing giant reached out directly to him based on a wiki he had started while pursuing a PhD in psychology from Northwestern University.

“R has really come a long way and you’re seeing it grow more significantly now…so I’m glad that I can contribute to that in some way,” Chang says. The product retails between $17 – $40, depending on the format and source.

A programmer by nature, Chang moved to Minneapolis in April of last year and works full time for Boston-based RStudio. He will be speaking about Using R to Make Interactive Web Applications at the upcoming Big Data Conference this Monday.